Source: Ars Technica
Texas's moratorium on new data center grid connections exposes a hard constraint: ERCOT can't guarantee reliability if demand from server farms keeps growing at 5+ gigawatts annually. For a decade, data center placement was driven by tax incentives and real estate costs. Now compute location depends on power availability. Hyperscalers face two paths. They can negotiate direct power deals with utilities, shifting costs to operators. Or they can redirect buildout to states with surplus capacity. Either move will alter where AI training infrastructure concentrates as the infrastructure race accelerates.